Speaker: The View from Venture Capital: Finding a Unicorn in the Haystack

Contest Judge: Startup Space 2019 Entrepreneur Pitch Contest

Brian Schettler is managing director of Boeing HorizonX Ventures, the company’s venture capital team that identifies and pursues opportunities to make strategic investments in early-stage startups focused on aerospace and industrial innovations. Boeing HorizonX explores opportunities through strategy and experimentation with business models for emerging aerospace applications.
Schettler has nearly two decades of experience in corporate and business strategy, mergers and acquisitions, business development, and product portfolio management at aerospace, technology and defense companies.
While at Boeing, he has led mergers and acquisitions, business strategy, and partnership development in Silicon Valley and beyond. In a previous strategy role, he partnered with Boeing Research & Technology to build development strategies for new technologies and products, as well as product and market strategies for new platforms and concepts.
Prior to Boeing, Schettler was vice president of corporate strategy at Cobham plc, a global technology company headquartered in the United Kingdom, where he led the evaluation and prioritization of private venture investment across product lines. He previously worked at ATK and Northrop Grumman, where he was responsible for portfolio development and management of investment strategy.
Schettler has a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Maryland. He has completed executive education courses at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and has certifications from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.